Quick Tour – Darwin Fenner Fund

Final deliberations in which the Darwin Fenner research analysts decide on how to allocate roughly $2 million are drawing near.Armed with classic and even some more recent, unpublished journal articles, the sector teams are dwindling down the stocks in the S&P 400 and S&P 500 to make final buy and sell recommendations.Traditionally, the fund has substantially outperformed the benchmark stock index with lower levels of risk, and carrying on this tradition is of much importance.

I am assigned to the Financial sector of the S&P 400 midcap index, and as one of the larger sector holdings in the Darwin Fenner Fund our recommendations need to be spot on.We are in the process of building out our model to narrow down the universe of 78 finance companies to a more manageable 6-10 for further fundamental research.We are looking at f-scores, z-scores, asset growth, momentum factors, earning surprises and external financings needed just to name a few.

We will be ready to support and defend our final recommendations in front of the rest of the analysts as well as a representative from the Tulane Endowment Fund at the four hour final deliberation.If our buys and sells make it out of this scrutiny, only time will tell if our recommendations continue to generate alpha for the Darwin Fenner Fund.